A recently released study looked at how much of a presence public relations has in news articles from Quebec newspapers, repeating (with some improvements) a similar 1988 study. Although the headline is that more stories have some PR elements in them, a key finding is that the percentage of stories that come from a single PR source has dropped by more than half. It’s also worth noting that a lot of things count as PR here, from attending a press conference to stuff posted on Twitter to getting a quote from a spokesperson. I might argue that as organizations have gotten bigger over the pas 30 years, the use of more formalized PR has become a necessity, and is not necessarily indicative of some sort of problem. (Another finding is that, based on a sample size of two editions, La Presse tends to have more sources per article than the Journal de Montréal.)

A five-stage reorganizing of radio station antennas on the Mount Royal Antenna has been completed, with the most notable change being that the city’s most powerful FM transmitter CKOI is now broadcasting from Mount Royal instead of the CIBC building downtown.

Cogeco Media president Michel Lorrain told me the process (approved by the CRTC in September) was completed before the holidays, but the stations were at 80% power until everything could be properly tested, and the ramp up to full power happened last week.

The acquisition was challenged by V, on the grounds that TVA already has too much power in the market, but the CRTC said the increased market share would be minimal, and in any case still lower than the 45% limit above which it would normally deny such applications.

The application to transfer the licences was supported by dozens of interveners, including many producers.

In addition to $1.8 million in tangible benefits, split between the Canada Media Fund, the Quebecor Fund and Telefilm Canada’s Talent Fund, the transaction will also result in an increase in Canadian spending quotas for both channels, as they’re integrated into the TVA group licence. Évasion must spend 40% of its revenues on Canadian content, while Zeste has no quota. As a condition of approval, both must now come up to the TVA group quota of 45%. And 15% of their revenues must be spent on “programs of national interest” (scripted drama and comedy, documentary and award shows) for the TVA group.

Several radio watchers have noticed that they’ve been hearing live voices on CFNV 940 AM the past few days, talking between the songs and giving weather and news updates.

Though the programming is still mostly music, far from the news-talk-debate format that owner TTP Media promised the CRTC when they first applied for a licence in 2011, or even the wellness-talk format that they seemed to move to when they renewed that licence in 2018, there’s at least something. (The hosts they have are veterans of the low-budget radio scene, where wellness programs have flourished, with shows on stations like CJMS 1040, CJLV 1570.)

But the voices are not original to the station. Instead, the shows are being simulcast from Mirabel-based digital radio station CNV (it appears to be a mix of programming from its main feed and its Succès absolus second channel, but there’s also some music that’s coming from neither of those sources).

Hosts being simulcasted include Robert Arcand (weekday mornings) and Diane Lafrance (weekdays at 11am). On their shows and on social media, they’re noting the simulcast.

No word on anything yet from the English sister station CFQR 600. I’ll update this if I hear more.

The Journal de Montréal has started a possibly satirical “Centre d’observation du Québec-Bashing“, and has discovered J.J. McCullough, who for some reason keeps getting published in the Washington Post.

TVA Nouvelles has finally apologized — almost a year later — for a story it ran that accused a mosque of demanding that women be excluded from a nearby construction site. That turned out to be false after an investigation that TVA has not released.

Montreal Gazette editor Basem Boshra (my boss) apologized after its website posted a story from American Media Inc. (originally from Radar Online) about a “Tinder Horror Date” who stabbed a woman and was tased by police, later dying because of it. A lot of people on Twitter criticized the headline and tweets about the story for portraying the attacker as the victim or being apparently flippant about a Tinder date that left a woman seriously injured. (Boshra offers some subsequent advice for editors apologizing for screwups).

In the decade or so I’ve been writing about local media, I’ve met most of the people in local TV and radio, at least in passing. But until December, Nat Lauzon wasn’t one of those people. She has worked weekends since 2011, so that has a lot to do with it. In fact, the only photo I had of her was this one taken of her while she was on the Virgin float at the St. Patrick’s Parade in 2011.

Nat Lauzon in 2011.

Nevertheless, I’ve wanted to write about her for a bit, because of the ironic situation she faces, being a person who deals with audio for a living but is losing her hearing.

It didn’t take long to convince my newspaper that this was a good story, and the result is this article that appears in Thursday’s paper. It focuses almost exclusively on an area in Lauzon’s head that’s smaller than a grape (or, well, two grapes since there’s one on each side), but since I had the chance to sit down with her, we talked about a bunch of other stuff, too.

Every year, I speak to winners of Concordia’s journalism school awards as they’re presented at the Montreal Gazette offices. Today, one of the 2016 winners of the Philip Fisher bursary, Safia Ahmad.

Not everyone who graduates from journalism school goes into what you would normally think of as journalism. In fact, I would guess that a majority don’t. Some decide that journalism isn’t for them and pursue something entirely different, others struggle to find jobs (not everyone from my graduating class could be a national journalist at the CBC, not that I’m jealous or anything Catherine), but a lot of people find that their skills and passion are more suited to a job that is like journalism, but not quite.

There are a lot of what I would call journalism-adjacent jobs out there. Arguably, as a copy editor, I’m in one myself. And just because you’re not hounding prime ministers with questions doesn’t mean you’re not doing something valuable in the media ecosystem.

Safia Ahmad, after being honoured with a journalism award in 2016, became a summer reporting intern at the Montreal Gazette the next year, writing many stories that I and my colleagues edited.

But she’s since decided that it’s not for her, as she lays out below. Now, the 25-year-old born-and-bred Montrealer works in communications, notably as media relations manager for Les Canadiennes of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, where I’ve run into her at games.

The not-very-creatively-named Elias Makos Show will feature “breaking news, debate, interviews, and discussion with listeners,” with a goal to not reinvent the wheel, Makos tells the Gazette’s Bill Brownstein.

In addition to CJAD hosting duties, Makos will be an online media analyst for CTV Montreal, returning to a role he had previously held on a freelance basis before joining BT.

Makos starts in his new roles on Dec. 31.

Update: A confidential source close to Elias Makos, whom I’ll name Malias Ekos, informs me that Mr. Makos doesn’t look like the picture above anymore. My source managed to acquire this image of Makos as he appears currently.

In short, Fomé, 24, was born in Cameroon and grew up in Columbia, S.C. She studied at Dawson College and then did an undergraduate degree in Communication Studies with a minor in Human Relations.

“My very first job was as a cashier at my neighbourhood’s mom and pop grocery store, where I got paid waayy below minimum wage but also learned skills that still benefit me to this day,” she says. “After that, various work experiences have included camp counsellor, helpline phone operator, set up and take down of gyms at school, events assistant with Concordia’s Alumni department, receptionist, mail clerk, internship coordinator, etc. I’ve done so many temp jobs, some of my friends like to call me ‘Josie the temp.'”

Every year, I speak to winners of Concordia’s journalism school awards as they’re presented at the Montreal Gazette offices. Today, one of the 2016 winners of the Philip Fisher bursary, Stéphane Grasso.

Stéphane Grasso in 2016.

Stéphane Grasso is an artist. His specialty is in film production, thanks to his education at Concordia’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema that started 15 years ago.

As he explains below, he produced documentaries for non-profits like World Vision, and that work led to a desire to focus on underrepresented people, so he decided to study journalism.

Evanov Radio’s controversial plan to launch Quebec City’s first English-language commercial radio station will have to wait some more after being denied again by the CRTC.

In a decision released Thursday, the commission said the Quebec City radio market “cannot sustain an additional radio station at this time” and that the two applications for new stations — the other by Gilles Lapointe and Nelson Sergerie is for a French station — would be returned.

Evanov had previously tried a decade ago to convince the CRTC to move forward with an English music station in the provincial capital, but the commission denied its application in 2010, in a controversial decision that included a dissenting opinion.

The application is controversial because the other stations in the market argue that Quebec City’s English-language population is far too small to sustain a commercial radio station, so Evanov would instead target the francophone population. By being an English station, it would not be subject to the 65% French-language music rule, which would give it an unfair competitive advantage by allowing it to play more American and U.K. hit songs that are very popular among francophone audiences.

Evanov, who wants to launch a Jewel brand station in Quebec City, argues it wants to serve the anglophone community as well as the anglophone tourist market (though Quebec City already has an English tourist information station), and that it has experience in running radio stations in small markets.

The 2010 decision includes a detailed analysis of the anglophone market in Quebec City. But today’s decision only analyzes the market conditions overall, without commenting specifically on the appropriateness of an English radio station in Quebec.

The current applications for Quebec City actually date from 2016, but were put on hold when the CRTC ran low on French-speaking commissioners.

Under CRTC rules, it won’t consider new applications for Quebec City for the next two years. In December 2020, they can try again.

The applications themselves haven’t yet been published, but should be soon. a public hearing is scheduled for Feb. 20 (to hear an application for Leclerc Communication to buy CHOI Radio X and 91,9 Sports from RNC Media), but these items will not require any oral presentations.

Numeris released its quarterly metered radio ratings today. There aren’t a lot of surprises, because it’s mostly the same numbers as the last time, and the time before that, and the time before that.

So instead of just excitedly reposting the top-line numbers or fetching the various spins by the broadcasters that make everyone look like they had the best quarter, I thought I’d take a look at some historical data and see how the stations are trending over time.

That same frequency is used by CKHQ-FM (Kanesatake United Voices Radio), a low-power (27W) community station serving the reserve about 25 kilometres away. And though the applicant’s engineers said (and the CRTC agreed) that the new station could co-exist with this existing one, because CKHQ is low-power it does not have a right to its frequency and could be forced to find a new one if a licensed station would receive interference. Because of Kanesatake’s proximity to Montreal, there aren’t other frequencies available that would be nearly as good, even for such a low-power station.

The Lachute station would also have limited CKHQ’s ability to seek an increase in power (though the CRTC says it “would not affect the ability of CKHQ-FM to serve its principal market” and “would not prevent CKHQ-FM from expanding to a regular power station”).

The Lachute application was denied, not because of concerns about CKHQ, but because of issues with the application itself. The commission seemed to think it was a bad application in general, that LS Telecom “did not provide a quality application and did not demonstrate an understanding of the regulations and policies for commercial radio and religious broadcasting.” But it particularly showed concern with the complete lack of news programming proposed, even after the CRTC reminded them that such a thing is expected of commercial FM radio stations, religious or not.

Leslie Roberts, who has been hosting the 9-to-noon show on CJAD 800 for two years, announced on Tuesday morning he will be stepping down from the job at the end of the month. His last show is Dec. 21.

Roberts told Andrew Carter he plans to do some travelling, and has accepted a position with travel website TravelToWellness.com, where he says he’s also been asked to launch a video channel, which he jokingly described as “Travel Travel 2.0” in reference to the former CFCF-12 show he contributed to back in the day.

He said his CJAD contract was expiring but he was asked to stay on a bit longer, and he is in talks with station management to continue to contribute in some capacity, perhaps as a regular panelist or analyst.

Roberts, whose father worked at CJAD, began his career in Montreal, mainly at CFCF, until he was hired first by Global Quebec then by Global Toronto, where he anchored its newscast for 14 years. Roberts resigned from the anchor chair at Global Toronto in 2015 after a Toronto Star investigation found that he owned a PR firm and his clients were appearing on his show without any disclosure.